


By All Four

by Sunshineditty



Category: Teen Wolf (TV), The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-05-05 10:23:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5371808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshineditty/pseuds/Sunshineditty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sentinel Jim Ellison and his guide Blair Sandburg are on the trail of a serial killer who murders young latent and online sentinels in the Pacific Northwest. Derek Hale - an unbonded guide - is trying to live through the pity of friends and family when his sentinel ex-girlfriend and the guide she left him for return to Beacon Hills. None of them will predict the series of events and the feral sentinel who will change the course of their lives forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be my contribution to the Rough Trade's "Little Black Dress" July 2015 fiction contest. "The Sentinel" is fanfiction's LBD as it can easily crossover to any 'verse so I chose TW. The goal was 10,000 words and I wrote about 7K before I ran out of time. I recently decided to finish it even though it is months late as I am trying to be better about finishing my stories! I enjoyed the universe I created so I may expand it later.

 

**_Then_ **

Blair reached out and touched Jim’s forearm, silently telling the sentinel to dial back his senses.  The kill zone was saturated with pheromones of the killer and the fading essence of the dead sentinel who spent the last hours of his life in unbearable pain, if the pictures tacked up on the walls were accurate.  At first glance they looked faked, the sort of mock up you’d see in a television show or in a movie depicting violence, but a glance around the trailer where they were found backed up the pictorial story.

“How did you know to call us, Mr. Rios?” Blair inquired quietly, his attention split between the greyed face of the freaked out neighbor and his stoic sentinel.

The stocky man shuffled a moment, glancing up at them, then down at his shoes. They were the only safe places to look since everything else was splashed with blood and other darker organic remains.

“Mi prima is a guía too, Guide Sandberg. She’s the one who told me about the casa de asesinato.” His voice was hoarse, emotions veering wildly for a moment before he visibly settled himself. “Ella tiene fuerza de bajo nivel but she felt when murió de muerte violenta.”

Blair wasn’t surprised that a low-level guide had felt the sentinel’s death. The agony of release would’ve been even more intense on the spiritual plane and would’ve affected any nearby guide, regardless of their sense-strength. Death was the greatest equalizer, especially when violent.

“She hear your Hunt, so she tell me to call.” His English had steadily devolved in the past half hour since they arrived and he showed them where the murder had occurred. Blair wasn’t surprised at his slip back to his natal tongue in a time of stress.

“Have you called the police?”

“No policía!”

“We’ll take it from here,” Jim said with clear dismissal in his voice. Mr. Rios nodded gratefully and quickly walked back to a trailer a few hundred feet away with a dark-haired woman staring at them through a dusty screen door. His cousin perhaps? Blair mentally waved away the idle speculation and turned his full attention back to his sentinel.

“Do we alert Major Crimes Unit?” It was a valid question since Jim’s old department worked with them on occasion when S&G Center matters intersected with mundane crimes.

“No, we need our people on this before we release the scene to them. I have a feeling this is the Sentinel Killer’s handiwork. I can smell him.”

Blair nodded, and then flipped his phone open so he could scroll through the contacts until he found the correct number and pressed dial. While he listened to the ringing, the bond between him and Jim pulsed gently as he automatically adjusted his empathetic shield to help his sentinel parse the crime scene without letting it overwhelm him. If Jim was correct and this was the same killer they’d called a Hunt upon, this would be the fifth dead sentinel they discovered. Henry Ferguson, their FBI liaison, had given them a profile of the killer: a male who was in his late twenties to early thirties, a loner through circumstance not by nature, obsessive in his stalking, and driven by a profound loss which translated into toxic rage he unleashed upon sentinels. Henry believed the unsub chose young latent or newly emerged sentinels because they were easier to handle.

“Felix we found another…in a trailer park outside Pine Top…no, just us so it’s a fresh scene. Okay, see you then. “

Blair turned back to the abandoned trailer – another similarity – and waited by the open door. He had already seen the ritually dismembered body once, no need to see the horror again. Jim didn’t ask him to step back inside, but reached to hand him the stack of photos he took down from the wall. Blair girded himself before looking through the pictorial evidence. They started out as shots of the victim going about daily life – they would have to reach out to the local S&G center to see what high school aged sentinels had recently went missing. Within four photographs, the photographer had given up his long-distance stalking and moved to kidnapping as now the victim lay on a bed with his hands tied behind his back. The uncomfortable position didn’t seem to pain him, though the slack lips and closed lids pointed to unconsciousness. Blair stopped looking when bloody symbols were carved into the sentinel’s chest.

“Chief, c’mere.”

Blair turned his face into his sentinel’s chest and dry-sobbed. He couldn’t understand the drive to kill; he knew murders happened every day in America, but the young sentinels hit especially close to home. He couldn’t help but see Jim in each of their dead faces.

“We couldn’t save them.”

The large heavy palm never stopped stroking his hair and Jim didn’t respond, but Blair knew the sentinel felt as deeply as he did even if he never voiced it. As Prime of the West Coast, all sentinels and guides fell under his purview, and were part of the loosely connected tribe made up of family prides and packs throughout California, Oregon, and Washington.  Primes didn’t call Hunts on a whim, and Jim was often riding the edge of ferine savagery as his territory was threatened by a vicious killer.  Blair bleakly thought of the months passed without concrete results and the many more sure to come if their unsub wasn’t stopped.

They only parted when Jim heard the familiar sound of Felix’s van in the distance.

* * *

**_Now_ **

"Oh honey," Melissa hummed as she finished the last stitch, gently patting a bandage in place. "You know she bonded formally with him."

Derek refused to look at her and instead focused on his bandaged hand. It wasn't as if he had gone out of his way to see her; she'd come into his place of work after all. He flinched when he remembered the floor she was going to.

"You knew?"

"We all did, but no one said anything because, well..."

Yes, he knew why.  Hell, all of Beacon Hills knew why. It was one of the drawbacks of small town living. A cliche, but still accurate.

"I wish you'd warned me at least, Mel. It wouldn't have been such a shock." It wasn't as if he still carried a torch for her, Derek wanted to say. He had gotten over his heart-ache and sense of loss years prior, helped when she and Devon moved out of town after graduation. It made sense why they'd come back after college - his mother was still her Alpha after all, and few Hale sentinels left the mountain for long.

"Derek, I'm sorry, I thought your mom would've mentioned it, or your sisters."

He knew exactly why they hadn't: they didn't want to upset their poor widdle Derek with news about his ex-girlfriend, even if six years had passed since they broke up in such a horribly public way.

"It's fine, Mel, I swear. And this had nothing to do with her, really, it was me just being clumsy."

He ignored the pitying glance Melissa cast at him before turning away to clean up her station. It was clumsiness that caused his hand to clench on the fragile glass test tube when he spotted Paige gliding across the lobby and pressing the up arrow for the lift.  He debated about saying something to her, when the doors opened and she stepped inside. Derek had stood there like a statue watching the numbers climb until it stopped at the fifth floor. The only doctors on that floor were OB-GYN, so there was no mystery as to why she would've gone there. He had no idea how long he lingered before the pain in his palm finally woke him from his daze and he sought out Melissa to stitch the six inch gash. Now he sort of regretted it because the older woman tended to mother him and want to (figuratively) kiss his boo-boos, be they physical or emotional.

"Oh, we have a new resident on the second floor. Timmons told me you were to avoid the privacy chamber during your rounds."

"What. Why?"

"Parrish found a half-naked feral on the outskirts of the Preserve this morning. Nearly ran him down in his patrol car because the kid ran across the road."

Derek winced. "Was he injured subduing the feral?"

Melissa shook her head. "Feral didn't put up a fight at all. He's severely malnourished and someone's been using him to experiment on. He had several burn marks, lacerations on his stomach and thighs, a broken collarbone and a badly healed bullet wound in his chest. They took him into surgery when x-rays showed metal fragments in the bone." She took a deep breath. "Dr. Patrick said he wasn't sure how the boy survived other than being a "goddamn insane sentinel.""

A growl rumbled in his chest and moved into his throat. He wasn't a sentinel like his mother and sisters, but he had the same instincts to protect the pack, the tribe. Sentinels who went feral usually had intense provocation. "Does he have a guide?"

"Alpha Deaton hasn't scanned him yet as they wanted to help him with the medical issues before delving into spiritual ones."

It made sense. "How old he is?"

"They don't know for sure, but he looks around eighteen or nineteen." Sixteen was the earliest most sentinels (non-violently) emerged, with nineteen being the most common age for boys. Girls differed wildly, though no one had managed to figure out why. Many chalked it up to their menstrual cycle and left it at that.

"So recently come online then."

She shrugged. They could only speculate until Alpha Guide Deaton said otherwise. Derek sighed and felt a little bad at the relief of having a feral in the hospital. He was sorry the kid had gone through torture, but at the same time a little glad the attention wouldn't be focused on him now that Paige was back in town. What was a little soured high school romance compared to a feral?

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**_Then_ **

"We looked through all the incoming reports from guides and here’s what we’ve found."

Henry stood in front of the Cascade Major Crime Unit, Jim and Blair, with a large geological map of Washington State pinned up to the board. There were black xs marked in random pattern at the edges but slowly tightened and narrowed into a circle towards the center.

"Whoever that sentinel is y'all felt come online, well, he should be found in this general area."

Blair stared at the pattern and narrowed his eyes in concentration when he realized the dead zone was just outside Cascade, in the heavily wooded area to the east of the city.

"Henry," Jim rumbled from his seat across the table, "How does this line up with the seven murders so far?"

The FBI liaison glanced at Blair before picking up a manila folder and taking out several pictures. Blair knew they were pictures of the deceased sentinels taken when they were still living, happy with their families, and not buried in the ground.  Henry quickly posted them up on the board according to where their bodies were found.

“The killer is definitely familiar with Washington and feels comfortable hunting here, which seems to indicate he’s a resident, or perhaps someone who grew up here. All of these victims were seventeen to twenty years of age, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and white. None of them were online for more than a year except for Marcus Travis and Richard Benson, who were both latent.”

“Sentinels.”

“Excuse me?” Henry’s eyes jerked from the faces of the lost boys to where Blair sat upright, hands clenched into fists on his lap out of plain sight of everyone except Jim who sat beside him.

“They were not victims. They were sentinels. Do not speak of them so dismissively.”

Henry was here to help, but he didn’t understand how it felt to lose their young, all that potential.

“Chief.”

Jim would never censor or reprimand his guide in public, always showing a united front against outsiders, so certain words, touches, and phrases became their secret code when or one or the other had to draw back. Blair knew his sentinel wasn’t angry with him for being emotional, but he also understood they needed this information. It was bigger than them and his own issues. He nodded and dropped back, closing his eyes to center himself as he tried to forget the screams of anguish he and guides in a four hundred mile radius had heard in the spiritual plane as a sentinel was birthed and died within the same split second.

“We need to get this out to the public, Prime Ellison. I know you wanted to keep it internal, but I think this attitude is hurting us because it allows our perp to work in a cloak of secrecy. If we had eyes on this -”

Jim held up a large hand and Henry obediently fell silent. Normally Blair would find it amusing how even mundanes reacted to his dominance, but today there was little to find funny.

“I happen to agree with you, Agent Ferguson, and we’ve already drawn up the announcement we wish to be released.”

The FBI Agent shifted, brows drawn into a frown. “With all due respect, Prime, this is no longer under your control. When the last victim was found on Federal land, it became our case. The Bureau will do everything to keep you in the loop, but -”

JIm stood, allowing his natural presence to quiet the agent again. He walked around the table towards the pinned map and stabbed a finger in the center of xs. “I don’t give a shit about your jurisdictional prudence, Fergueson. What I care about are the sixty guides who woke up screaming because another sentinel was silenced. You aren’t one of us so I will excuse your ignorance and accept your help, but don’t for a second think that the FBI will be running this investigation. We brought you in out of courtesy and because of the compromises I made with your bosses. Detective Bianca Davies will be running point and you may handpick two, just two, of your agents I know you brought with you to accompany us to the dead zone.”

The Prime had spoken.

* * *

**_Now_ **

Derek skipped out of breakfast that morning because he wanted to avoid his mother. He knew he would pay for it later - maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but someday and someday soon. She always had a way of turning up at the most inopportune moments, as if she had a homing beacon on her children that told her the best (read most embarrassing moment possible) time to inflict herself on them.

He winced a little at his uncharitable thought because he knew she loved him and meant well, but she just couldn’t understand how he had no desire to seek out his sentinel. Unlike his sisters, happy with their own guides, he never had a pressing need to find out the “other half” of him. Of course, Derek would never tell his (overbearing) family how he didn’t think he had anyone out there for him; it was statistically possible for him to never meet his destined sentinel given how many more guides than sentinels there were in the world, much less his neck of the back woods California. Derek had never been more than a hundred miles from his home and he was a small-town boy at heart. He knew if he ever expressed such sentiments, Laura or Cora would say it was Paige’s fault and cluck their tongues at him, telling him to get over her already.

Derek was truly over her, and even the lingering sting of humiliation when she came online as a sentinel and immediately found her guide, ditching Derek to pant and writhe all over the other boy in the most public setting of all: a Lacrosse home game. Beacon HIlls was as Lacrosse-crazy as Texas towns were about football, so naturally nearly the whole town was turned out to watch, and a good portion of the other teams’ fans. Even to this day, ask anyone about the Beacon Hills Wolves vs. the Cutter Valley Lumberjacks and they’ll tell you the final score, who played, and “oh yeah, that time the Hale boy got dumped for another guide.”

It was self-preservation that kept him from attending the quarterly S&G meet’n’greets held at the Town Hall. Despite his parents’ love story - their eyes met across the crowded hall and suddenly they both knew - Derek knew he was more likely to be alone for the rest of his life. It sounded melodramatic whenever he said it aloud, but it was the down and dirty truth. Unlike Laura’s harrowing almost drowning story with Cam or Cora’s getting shot to meet her guide, Derek came online at sixteen with little fanfare. He woke up one day with a beady-eyed raven named Ulfric staring at him from the foot of the bed. Him being a guide was more traumatic for his family as everyone expected him to be a sentinel like his sisters; Derek had suspected from a young age he would be different simply because he didn’t have the same issues they did. He was the most even-tempered Hale sibling with sympathy and empathy scores much higher than either Laura and Cora.

Dr. Deaton, the Alpha Guide of Beacon County, tested him and gave him a three-sense score, stating he could live his life without a sentinel and even if he found one, he would most likely form a platonic rather than romantic bond. Derek was more upset that guides were tested by a sense-system designed to match them up to sentinels than he was by his prognosis. Derek James Hale was a realist and a pragmatist - it was better to serve a host of sentinels then bound by one for life - so after graduation he went for his LPG certificate (1) and came back to Beacon Hills with the intent to work at Eichen House. Sentinel Dr. Melissa McCall, a childhood friend of his mother’s, had just started up her own program at BH Memorial for injured sentinels who weren’t bad off enough to be shipped to Eichen House, and needed latent and low level online guides to work for her. It was the perfect fit and Derek loved his work.

Today, however, he was using it as justification as to why he couldn’t have a heart-to-heart talk with Talia about the “gorgeous and divinely funny” sentinel who just moved to town and worked at the Hale Bank with his father.

“What bug is up your butt?” Rebecca inquired, tugging her scrub shirt down and smoothing it over her hips. Derek shut his locker door and leaned against it, banging his head softly against the metal.

“Mom has someone new for me to meet.”

“Poor boyo. Well, if you don’t want this one either, send him or her my way.”

Derek wrinkled his nose at her, smiling a little at her cackle. Rebecca was his closest friend at work and terminally single despite being a four-sense guide. She was smart, funny, and imminently practical, something Derek thought should be the basis of a relationship instead of how her biology fit with another’s. He knew he was in the minority who thought this way, so he didn’t tell her what he really thought. Instead but he pushed his thought away to focus on the other guide.

“What happened with Robert?”

The pretty guide rolled her green eyes. “Threebie who thought being married and bonded would get him more sex.”

“He knew your level, right?”

“He said we should “get to know one another better” and maybe the sparks would fly.”

While Primes and Alpha guides and sentinels needed to be equal in strength, threes and lower senses could be partnered at varying levels. Marriage was a recent trend among sentinels who wished to have both a spouse and a guide - this usually only worked if the spouse was a Beta as most mundanes still held to a certain view of fidelity that wouldn’t be possible given the nature of S/G bonds, even mostly platonic ones.

“Want me to take him into the Preserve and “lose” him for a few days?”

Rebecca giggled and patted Derek on the shoulder. “Thank you for the lovely thought, but no. Hey, did you hear about that feral?”

Derek nudged her into walking as he knew they needed to get to the second floor before rounds started.

“Yeah, Sentinel McCall told me about him a week or so ago.”

“Well, he made it through the surgery, but get this. Dr. Nichols told Jinne, who told Todd, who told me that the reason why the feral survived a gunshot to the chest was because his heart is on the right instead of the left.”

“Oh, well if the daisy chain said so, it must be true.”

Derek rolled his eyes, though he really didn’t doubt the gossip was at least eight-five percent true. He had forgotten about the strange sentinel as his three patients were on the opposite end of the second floor to where the critical and feral patients were roomed. He was too busy dodging his mother’s match-making attempts to worry about something that didn’t ultimately impact his life in any significant way.

“Even weirder - they still don’t have any ID on the patient. He didn’t come in with any and Doris in Dispatch says her cousin Mike - remember the lanky deputy from the barbeque last year? - said there aren’t any missing person’s reports matching his description.”

Rebecca’s chatter washed over Derek and settled his roiling mind. Her run down of the doctors, other nurses, and patients was part of his Monday routine, as was the scentless corridors, dim lighting, and hushed silence on the sentinel floor. They parted ways at the elevators, each going to their assigned rooms.

The day passed quickly and Derek found himself idly wondering about the feral. As much as his family pissed him off or embarrassed him, Derek wouldn’t want to be pack-less or without an identity. It seemed a worse fate than not finding his sentinel half.

As he walked down the hallway at the end of his shift, Derek saw a quick flash of green a few feet further than the elevator bay. Curiosity killed the cat, he knew, so he ignored it especially as it would bring him towards the restricted  area. A soft hissing noise accompanied another flash of color - blue this time - and Derek couldn’t help his feet pointing in that direction even if he didn’t move any further. He resolutely watched the red lit numbers decrease as the elevator came down from the seventh story. Just as it hit the third floor, the hissing noise increased in volume until Derek thought he heard words.

He could’ve sworn he heard, “Help us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) Licensed Practical Guide - unbonded guides (male or female) who help traumatized sentinels transition between the spirit realm and reality, shielding them until the sentinels can dial down their senses so they can emerge from Zones. They also provide basic care like recording vitals, prepare injections, monitor health and medications, assist with hygiene, and aid doctors or nurses with tests and procedures.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Then** _

“Ma’am, this will be hard -”

A rusty laugh tinged with tears interrupted Felix’s heartfelt words. “Hard is getting the call every parent dreads. Hard is hearing that my bb-boys might be dead.”

Claudia Stilinski broke then, muffling her sobs into the shoulder of her grim-faced husband. Blair tightened his empathetic shields even further. The dead bodies they’d found in the forest clearing hadn’t been hard to identify - Stuart’s identification was in his back pocket and his brother’s wallet was lying a few feet from his body as well. The crime scene investigators believed the boys were surprised by their murderer and they evidently thought it was a mugging, or at least tried to appease him or her with money. Their deaths were straight-forward: Stuart was shot point-blank in the heart with an exit wound through his back and his brother was shot in the head execution style. This had nothing of the esoteric and frankly baffling ways the Sentinel Killer sacrificed his victims.

“We just want to identify the bodies and get on with burying our boys,” Janusz Stilinski quietly urged, one hand gently patting his sobbing wife. Jim shifted beside Blair, and Blair knew he was discomfited by their emotions. Hearing and smell were his strongest senses, and he more than likely felt the mother’s grief on a very visceral and physical level. He was glad the Stilinskis couldn’t see them, as they stood in Felix’s office a small ways away. It had nothing to do with their quest, and this family were mundanes, but Jim still felt responsible for the deaths that happened in his territory.

“Why did you ask if our boys were Sentinels?”

The keen edged look in Mr. Stilinski’s eyes was familiar - with a start Blair remembered this man was a cop, a Sheriff back in Oakhurst, Tennessee.

“We discovered your sons while pursuing another case.” Felix looked down at his hands for a moment before returning his gaze to the mourning parents. This wasn’t the coroner’s first autopsy nor would it be his last, but dead kids always got to him. “They didn’t suffer.”

“How could you know that?” Mrs. Stilinski turned wet eyes to him. Rage and grief combined to ravage her natural beauty as she drew her lips back in a soundless snarl. “They were shot like dogs and left in the forest to die.”

“Both of them were shot point-blank and there was minimal blood loss. This tells me their hearts stopped beating immediately upon impact.” Felix was implacable despite his soft tone.

Mrs. Stilinski waved away his words and turned to the two bodies lying on the steel tables beneath protective sheets. “I want to see my sons.”

“Your son -” here Felix stumbled pronouncing the name they all puzzled over, “ was shot in the forehead. He won’t look the same.” The back of his head was gone, which made the front of his skull look oddly misshapen.

This time she didn’t bother looking at him, but stepped up and drew the corner of the sheet down. Her hand flew to her mouth and she faltered, her right hand fluttering at her side as her husband stepped closer and drew her into his protective embrace. The sheriff visibly steeled himself and looked down at his child. A moment later, he spun around in rage.

“What the hell is the meaning of this?”

Jim straightened and stepped forward out of the shadows. He was sympathetic towards the parents but he wouldn’t let them abuse one of his Pride.

“What is wrong here, Sheriff?”

Cold blue eyes locked with Jim’s. “This isn’t my son. Where is Stiles?”

* * *

 

**_Now_ **

Derek groaned and dropped his head into his hands. His family would never let him live this down and he'd be lucky to keep his job, no matter who his mother was or his relationship to the Director.

“You okay, Derek?”

“Oh, I’m just fine.”

“Can you open the door for us?”

“Um, not exactly.”

“Derek, this is Sentinel Richards. What do you mean, “not exactly?””

Not exactly meant the feral had pushed all the beds in the room to barricade the door against intruders and was pacing back and forth like, well, a sentinel on a watchtower.

“Has he hurt you in any way?”

Derek scoffed loudly for those in the hallway to hear him. This boy was a feral sentinel, of course, but he was also one who was recovering from a gunshot wound to the chest - turned out Rebecca had impeccable sources for gossip after all. There was promise of strength in the wide shoulders, large hands, and feet, but the feral looked like a puppy who hadn’t grown into his paws yet.

“He hasn’t touched me at all.”

And it was the truth. Derek had foolishly allowed his curiosity to outweigh good sense and found a grayish-green snake moving sluggishly against the floor. Despite all the training to the contrary, Derek had picked the reptile up and allowed it to curl around him in search of warmth. Animals didn’t randomly appear in the hospital, so Derek had known it belonged to one of the sentinels on the floor. Being a guide was good for something, and Derek was able to soothe the snake while cautiously opening his shields and extending his senses to lead him to the right person. He had hesitated when he realized who was missing a snake, but his innate sense of duty lead him to the restricted area. Of course, the duty was of a guide to a sentinel and not an employee to his employer, the hospital.

Once he opened the door to the room, he was faced with a dilemma. The feral was strapped to the bed - for his protection and that of everyone else - but he looked so harmless. Skeletal really, even through the hospital gown. Despite the sentinel’s pitiful appearance, Derek wrapped himself in layers of flexible mirror shields, an instinctive protection he raised to deflect intrusive psonic interference. It took months of training in his practical guide courses before Derek could raise them so effortlessly. Low sense-level guides were used to help wounded and often unbonded sentinels during long convalescence because of their ability to project in a soothing manner; it was important work, but dangerous nonetheless because of the risk of a forced bonding during an unguarded moment.

Derek crossed the threshold and gently unwrapped the snake from his neck, but froze when the feral’s eyelids slid open. A sentinel’s eyes took on a light golden tone when he or she were using their senses, but it faded once they stopped. Ferals, on the other hand, had a permanent black oily sheen as if the pupils had expanded enough to eat the natural color. Derek had never seen the phenomena in person, only knowing through videos and textbooks. Now, faced with terrifying reality, Derek used all of his training not to make sudden moves that might startle the feral into violence.

“Hi, my name is Derek,” he soothed, inching his way closer to the bedside. The feral cocked his head, black eyes never leaving his face. The sentinel’s body wasn’t tensed for movement and the heart monitor showed an even beat, so Derek subtly unclenched his own bunched muscles. He held out the limp snake in his hands as an offering, though the feral never glanced down at it.

“This is your companion I’m returning.”

The snake moved then, a lithe wriggle that caused Derek to lose his focus for a moment as he instinctively changed his grasp so not to drop it. The feral exploded out of the bed, the sound of tearing cloth almost lost in the sound of his racing heart before it was silenced when the monitor’s cord was pulled from the wall. Derek fell back against the other bed, eyes wide open as he groped for the call button. The feral crouched once his bare feet touched the cold linoleum floor and tilted his head.

Scenting, Derek realized once he recognized the gesture. It wasn’t like other sentinels he’d seen, but more like the hunting dogs his uncle kept penned until deer season. With the same economy of motion, the feral flashed forward and began barricading the doors, a stream of incomprehensible sounds tumbling from his mouth. He used two of the four beds in the room and stood stock-still as he obviously listened for anyone heeding Derek’s panicked call.

“Derek, you need to calm him down, try to direct his attention away from the door while we try to get through. Touch him and see if you can help him.”

“Are you nuts?  He’s feral.”

As if Sentinel Richard’s instructions didn’t fly in the face of all guide logic. If the feral were merely zoning, then Derek might be helpful, but  the type of psychosis he was displaying could only be cured by the touch of his actual guide, if even then. Why he wasn’t moved to Eichen House immediately upon coming out of his successful surgery was something Derek was going to find out once he got out. If he got out.

“Derek,” the voice had changed now. It was Alpha Guide Deaton. “You need to find a way.”

Until now, the feral had only paced, but upon hearing Deaton’s voice, he stumbled away from the door with his hands held up over his head in classic defensive pose. Derek stared in shock at the now gibbering and sobbing boy who curled up in a fetal position in the corner the furthest away from the door.

The snake, forgotten in the sudden events, unwound from Derek’s forearm, its head raised. Derek stared down at the moving reptile and watched as a long pink forked tongue flickered out.

“We’re sssafe with you; make the othersss go away.”

“They’re only here to help.”

“Keep the othersss away from our den.”

Derek couldn’t believe he was arguing with the feral’s spirit animal. Hell, he barely spoke to Ulfric, much less argue with him. The snake appeared confident the guide would follow its instructions because it twined around the hospital bed’s legs until it reached the floor, and slithered over to its sentinel. The feral had gone silent and slowly uncurled long enough for the snake to wrap itself around his neck before tucking back into a protective ball.

“Um guys, go away.”

“What?”

“You’re just making him more and more upset. I think I will have a better chance of getting him to leave peaceably if you would, uh, just leave us alone right now.”

There was an low-voiced intense debate among those gathered outside the door, but even Derek could tell when they came to a decision as several sets of shoes squeaked away on the clean floor. Deaton had remained, though, as his smokey voice hailed them again. There was something about the Alpha Guide that disturbed the injured sentinel because he hitched himself as close to the corner as possible and Derek could count each rib and vertebra through the thin hospital gown.

Not understanding his own actions, but unable to counteract his instincts, Derek tentatively lowered his shields and reached for the outer edges of where guide met sentinel. It was as if he went from walking across the arid desert and suddenly found himself in the midst of a humid jungle. Air was heavy in his lungs and he labored to breathe as he touched the diamond brightness he immediately identified as the snake. Derek pushed past it and touched the small electric ball he could feel the snake protected; there was a snap and jerk as the brightness tried to slice through him, yet he had known the defensive move and smoothly slid around and through.

“Sentinel,” Derek murmured, eyes closed as what he saw wasn’t of the physical plane.

The ball suddenly exploded outwards into heavy spikes, punching through his thinned shields and he screamed.

He couldn’t stop screaming.


	4. Chapter 4

**_Then_ **

“So you’re saying the missing boy -” again the name hampered Fergueson’s tongue, so Blair quietly said “Stiles,” to get the questioning back on track - ” is one of the Stilinskis’ sons?”

Jim nodded at the agent standing next to him as they both watched Bianca speak to the grieving parents. One of the murdered boys was as of yet unidentified, but with the new angle to work, the squad had sent unis back to the school Stuart attended. Given their proximity to the city and to each other, it was safe to surmise the two victims were together. The location where they were found, while not exactly off the beaten path, also precluded strangers just happening upon one another. This meant the unsub had tracked one or more of them and killed the others to take the missing boy. But why? Could they be on the trail of the Sentinel Killer?

“You’re sure Stiles wasn’t a sentinel?”

Jim could hear Bianca gently question the still shocked parents. The Sheriff’s light baritone mingled harmoniously with his wife’s lilting soprano - he could tell by the sliding consonants and burred vowels, English wasn’t her first language.

“Positive,” Claudia Stilinski replied sharply, her fine-boned hands wringing the Kleenex given to her in the morgue. “I would think we’d notice if our son was one of _them_.”

Blair’s hand tightened on his arm as Jim instinctively started forward at the venomous tone, twining scent of putrid fear and deep anger polluting the air. It wasn’t uncommon for mundanes to loathe their _otherness_ , but it was especially damning in the parent of a latent. It made him wonder if she had ignored the signs because of her prejudice. Or even worse, could she have killed her own children in order to wipe the taint away?

“Claudia.”

The reprimand was steel-lined for all its softness and Claudia's anger folded back into itself as she melted into the back of the chair. The Sheriff stood behind his seated wife, one hand on the back while another rested on near his waist in a stance Jim recognized from long-time cops: he was used to having a duty belt riding his hips.

“What my wife means to say is, Stiles isn’t exactly what you’d call sentinel material.” There was a pause as fondness softened his craggy face for a moment. “Stuart is the methodical and precise one - it's why he’s in Cascade as your university has the best Herpetology program in the country. Stiles is still trying to find himself and only recently decided upon forensic handwriting analysis.” The man stopped, a shaky breath escaping him as he rubbed a hand over his eyes in a futile attempt to hide the traces of tears escaping. “And no, we don’t know for sure if Stiles is a latent or not. My boys were adopted.”

Jim stilled at the latest revelation. It was common practice in the US for babies to be screened for latent genes at birth along with the usual disease tests. For a latent sentinel - which they didn’t know Stiles was for certain, of course, but was looking more and more likely - it would be next to impossible to go undiscovered. It was why S&G centers were built in every state, to help provide care and instructions for latent children born to mundanes.

“They weren’t born here.”

Mrs. Stilinski turned wet brown eyes in his direction as this was the first time Jim spoke at all during the discussion.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but you’re correct. They were born in Poland to a dear friend of the family.”

The flush heating up the Sheriff’s neck and the mixed chemical aroma of guilt and sadness intrigued Jim, but he tabled the observation for now. He didn’t really care about the intricacies of the Stilinskis’ marriage so much as their children.

“So neither boy was ever tested?”

The Sheriff shrugged. “We didn’t adopt them until they were a year old. We knew the family they came from and they’ve never had a sentinel or guide in their family tree.”

“That you know of, “ Blair interjected quietly. “Many Polish Sentinel and Guide families went underground during the Austro-Turkish war in the 1660s because it was a very dangerous time to be labeled other. They continued to remain hidden, though only to those who didn’t know the code.”

“What code?” Mrs. Stilinski seemed unwillingly fascinated by Blair’s lecture.

“Tapestry weaving. They kept track of births and deaths by weaving it into rugs and blankets.”

A sudden thought occurred to Blair, arresting his speech as a pattern started to emerge. The randomness of the attacks seemed to indicate a disordered mind - which the unsub definitely had - but the type of sentinels the killer chose was very very specific.

“What year were the boys born?”

“1996.”

“Chief, what’s going on?”

Blair turned to him and reached out, his hand brushing against Jim’s forearm. They shared a telepathic bond, but it was strengthened through touching.

_**< I think I know who the killer is targeting.>** _

_**< Who?>** _

_**< European descended sentinels.>** _

_**< How do you know this?>** _

_**< I was looking at the files earlier and all of the boys killed were the first generation in their family to be born in America.>** _

_**< But how is he finding this information out? And I can see how he’d know about the online sentinels, but how is finding the latent ones?>** _

_**< That I haven’t quite figured out yet.>** _

“Why do you need to know this?”

Blair leaned across the table and took Mrs. Stilinski’s hand, his shields extended to include her in the bubble. He didn’t want to cut her off from her grief because that would do more harm than good right now, but he did want her to be able to think clearly.

“Why was Stiles here this weekend? What brought him up here now?”

Her lip trembled then firmed. “He and Stuart haven’t been apart more than a few hours their entire lives until Stuart decided to come here for college. Stiles was lost and lonely, almost completely fell apart until he finally decided upon a graphology program in Cupertino, California. This was the first time the boys could meet up. Stuart was staying the summer for an internship he got through one of his professors.”

Blair tactfully withdrew from touching her when tears threatened again. He could sense through their physical connection she truly wasn’t prejudiced against sentinels and guides, but she did hold them responsible for one son’s death and the other’s possible disappearance. It was a good sign that Stiles’ body wasn’t found, but also a bad one because it meant the unsub took him with him. And if they couldn’t track down the source, he would end up on the morgue slab just like his twin.

The interview wrapped up soon after as there was little information left to gather so Jim and Agent Fergueson ushered the Stilinskis out of the squad room. Blair could hear the agent promising Mrs. Stilinski to find their lost son, while Jim answered the sheriff's questions about sentinels; it was more and more likely Stiles came online during the midst of the brutal attack. The CSI crew on site where they found the bodies completed their assessment and had shared their findings. All three boys were surprised by the killer as there was no overt sign of a struggle, which would've ensued since they were all healthy and well-developed young males. The killer had come across Stuart's friend first and shot him point-blank range before turning to the twins. Whether Stuart stepped in front of his twin on purpose or not, it had likely saved Stiles life, especially when the Stilinskis revealed they were mirror twins. In that, they were literally mirror images of one another so Stiles, the younger by ten minutes, had all of his organs and birthmark on the opposite side from Stuart. The bullet ripped through Stuart, killing him instantly, and passed through to his brother, who didn't die because his heart wasn't on the same side.

Facts gave way to magic because there was no evidence of a sentinel coming online except for the guides in a four hundred mile radius who felt him emerge into the spiritual plane with such vigor, some were fatigued for days afterwards. Blair proposed it was the breaking of the twin's bond that mimicked the death they assumed was of the young sentinel. Cops dispatched to the university came back with a name: Henry Daniels. He was Stuart's classmate and partner on a herpetology internship where they were studying the ripple effects of human encroachment upon wild snakes' territories.

Bianca threw a dart at the picture up on the cork board she'd turned around as soon as the Stilinskis left the room. She said it helped her think whenever she tried to work through a hard case. 

"So, why did he kill the three to begin with? They were out in the woods minding their own business, why would he attack them?"

Blair leaned against her desk as he too studied the kill board covered with pictures and maps. "Maybe they were unwitting witnesses? We know SK tends to come back to this area as every other victim is from Washington. What if they came across him picking a dump site and he killed them in reaction?"

"But why a gun? He usually sticks to personal weapons like knives and hatchets. Why switch now and so suddenly?"

It was a valid and puzzling question that bothered Blair. Until now, there was no sign of gun play - the Sentinel Killer subdued his victims with drugs ministered with a needle to the neck and tied them down before ritualistically carving them up.  The length of time between capture and death fell in a two week gap, though some were closer to a week and others to the end. It seemed to vary dependent upon the strength of the sentinel - this is why Blair had told Jim he was positive the killer was a one or two sense guide. It was the only thing that could explain how the sentinels weren't able to break free - even newly emerged ones were still stronger than mundanes, regardless of being drugged. Unless...something was muffling their senses and disorienting them so completely they zoned. Once zoning hit, they would be incredibly vulnerable to any outside aggression and would fall easily into their deaths.

“What if he has an accomplice?”

Blair jerked his head up and stared at Bianca. “What? There is no indication of two murderers.”

Biance shook her head and stood up abruptly, the chair skittering to slam into the desk behind her. “Hear me out. So far we’ve seen some pretty contradictory behavior by this guy. I know there are serial killers who are incredibly well-ordered like Harry Powers, but so far the bodies themselves smack of a John Wayne Gacy level of rage. But we don’t find any fingerprints, hair, fibers, or fluids from anyone beside the victims. Now, I can see the perp grabbing these guys in a methodical manner, but once he’s lost his head with bloodrage? The level of brutality these sentinels experienced show a really disordered mind, yet we find nothing." She drew a quick harsh breath. "What if there are two."

"Two murderers?"

"Yes. No." Bianca shoved a hand through her long dark hair as she began pacing. "I'm thinking there is the murderer and then his accomplice, or maybe handler would be a better word."

"Why handler?"

"What if...what if the killer did everything, but the other one, handler for lack of a better word, was there afterward to protect him?"

"But why? Why would this handler protect the killer? He's tearing at the very fabric of our community," Blair protested, his mind spinning with the implications. He hadn't breathed a word of his suspicions to anyone beside Jim, and he winced as he wondered if he should've listened more to Jim's assertion of sharing with Bianca. She was the best asset they had in the mundane world because she'd worked and lived closely enough with sentinels and guides that she could handle the issue diplomatically.

And if the killer really were a guide, Blair had a feeling they would need all the help they could muster. Mundanes wouldn't care that the guide was only attacking sentinels, as the idea of an out of control psychic - a trigger word laden with negative conotations - could potentially erupt into a political storm of epic propotions. It wouldn't be the first time the U.S. government attempted to step in and restrict sentinels and guides, though the Primes had managed to wrest conditional treaties each time. They were fortunate they had the wealth and muscle to back them up, unlike many others who fell beneath the heel of the mighty Uncle Sam.

Bianca didn't seem to notice his agitation because she continued with her theory. "What if, and I know I'm probably going out on a limb here, the latest boys were attacked becuase they witnessed more than a body dump? What if it was a meeting between our killer and his accomplice and the boys were just there at the wrong place at the wrong time? Stiles being a latent was purely coincidental."

Due to Jim's and Blair's connections, they'd finally received reports from all the S&G Centres in the areas where the victims grew up; unsurprisingly, all of the boys, even the latents, were registered, excepting Stiles Stilinski. His parents had voluntarily turned over his medical records, which showed he was never tested for the latent gene or sick all that often. In fact, the most notable fact about him was being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder - this, both Jim and Blair believed, was the only manifestation of his latent sentinel senses. His brother Stuart, on the other hand, was sick quite often and considerably weaker of the two as he had Polymyalgia rheumatica, a painful inflammatory autoimmune disease that caused muscle pain and stiffness around the shoulders and hips. It was strange for a male so young to have it as most sufferers affected by it were 50 and older. He, too, was never tested for any latent genes.

"That's a very large coincidence," Jim retorted dryly fron the doorway. Bianca was surprised, though Blair wasn't as he'd felt the comforting presence of his sentinel approaching.

"I know. But then what? Stiles was the target and the other two got in the way? If so, why try to take him when there were witnesses around? The killer hadn't done that before. Most of the families and friends didn't realize the victim was gone until hours or even days had passed. Why change his M.O. now and with a gun? He's never killed anyone but his intended target."

Jim held up both hands as a shield against Bianca's outpouring of frustrated words.

"Dunno, Bianca. I wish I did." He sighed, his face lined with tension and exhaustion. Blair extended his hand to Jim and inaudibly sighed when the sentinel crossed the room to take it. If SK followed the routine he'd established, they weren't looking for a live body but another dead one. A month had lapsed between Stiles' abduction and the grisly discovery of the bodies, which meant the grieving parents camped in a local hotel would be attending a funeral in the near future. Once Stuart's body was released from Felix's office, they were shipping it back to Tennesse for a burial in his hometown's cemetary. Blair knew without using any of his guide senses that the Stilinskis were hoping against hope they would only have to bury one son instead of two, but it was a futuile wish.

"Hey, um, guys, sorry to interrupt."

The unit secretary looked uncomfortable when the occupants in the room turned to him.

"Yes?"

The young man waved a small piece of paper in his hand and directed his eyes towards Blair.

"Uh. it's the Centre. They said they have urgent need of Guide Blair."

Blair started, a protest already on his lips. It was true as a Shaman he was committed to duties outside of Jim's investigations, but so far he was able to pass most cases to other Senior Guides as this was deemed the most critical use of his time. Jim forestalled his words by beckoning the man to him and taking the message. The man flinched and nearly fled the room; the his fast retreat echoed down the hallway.

"Jim, I can't -"

"Chief, right now we are just spinning our wheels here and there's nothing more to be done at the moment. We have no idea where the SK is, when and if we'll find the Stilinski boy, so you may as well find out what was so important that the Centre called here instead of calling your cell."

Blair refused to look guilty as Jim confiscated the small black phone from his front shirt pocket and raised an eyebrow when he saw it was turned off. He snatched the white square of paper from Jim's hand and turned towards the land phone behind him with a huff.

Regina's warm dulcet tones welcomed him when he tapped in the direct line to the office, bypassing all the menus.

"Shaman Sandburg, thank you for calling me back so fast. We have a developing situation that may need your expertise."'

"Regina, I can't right now, you know -"

Her voice hardened, though it never lost its warmth. "I understand the complicated situation you're currently dealing with, but you must understand _this_ one. Alpha Sentinel Hale of Beacon Hills has called because her son is caught in a bonding loop for the last three days. For some reason, Beta Guide Hale thought it prudent to try and bond with a _feral._ "

Blair winced at her words and realized his presence was necessary as bonding loops were dangerous because it meant there was soul deep rejection of the bond; as a shaman, he could walk the misty path and bring the pair from the edge with minimal damage. His shoulders bowed beneath the weight of this new responsibility, but one he couldn't in good conscience pass to another.

"Send me the information so I can get there."

"The Centre's jet is already fueled and waiting on you, Shaman."

He politely thanked her and ended the call.

"I am sorry, Bianca, but it looks like I -"

"We," Jim interrupted with a warning glance.

"We will be leaving for California. Unfortunately needs of the tribe must be put above even this."

Bianca looked curious, but refrained from questioning why the Prime Alpha and Guide of the West Coast were departing for another state during a Hunt. She knew enough about the culture to side-step most problems stemming from a mundane's ignorance, yet she didn't know all. Instead she only nodded and promised to keep them apprised of all new developments.

"Beaon Hills, here we come," Blair muttered a little resentfully.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**_Now_ **

Director Sentinel McCall waited for them at the back entrance of Eichen House, her dark hair twisted back in a no-nonsense ponytail. Her face was kind and stretched in an exhausted smile as she respectfully nodded at both Primes. 

"Please call me Melissa. Thank you for coming so quickly."

She started briskly walking down the long hallway towards the containment rooms. Jim and Blair followed, both appreciating the no-nonsense approach she took. 

"Explain the situation." 

Melissa stopped next to a large metal door and rubbed her forehead tiredly. "Derek is an LPG at Beacon Hills Hospital who works with low-level sentinels. For reasons that aren't clear, he somehow ended up in the room of a feral sentinel recently found on the preserve. From what I was told, the feral barricaded them into his hospital room and wouldn't let anyone in. Since the sentinel in question was recovering from surgery, it was determined he wouldn't be very strong, so Alpha Guide Deaton asked Derek to try to reach him on the spiritual plane." Dark brown eyes flashed up and anger overcame her exhaustion. "That's when the screaming began."

Blair shuddered a little, his mind flashing through horror stories of forced bondings. "Why did the hell did it take so long for you to call the Centre?"

Melissa grimaced. "I was overruled by Deaton as he said he could fix the situation." It wasn't often for a guide to overrule a sentinel, regardless of sense-strength, except in instances when a guide was at risk. It was thought only one guide could understand how to help another, which usually worked. These were extraordinary circumstances. "Security broke down the door and Deaton separated them, and Derek stopped screaming, but..." she paused. "Then the sentinel began convulsing so Derek crawled back over to him. I was the one who finally alerted you. Deaton was just making the situation worse, especially when we had to do modified field surgery on the feral to repair the damage because he couldn't be separated from Derek without him seizing." 

"Damage?"

"When the feral went into convulsions, he ripped open his stitches and bled over everything, including Derek." 

"Why do you keep calling him feral?" Jim's blank face didn't show the curiosity humming through their bond. "Feral" wasn't a term that was lightly tossed around and she was using it interchangeably.  

Sentinel McCall turned her gaze from Blair to Jim. "He has the eyes; I have no idea of the original color." she replied simply. "He hasn't spoken or reacted sanely since he was brought in."

"What's happened to him that required surgery?"

"He was found with a GSW to his chest and several lacerations and broken bones."

Blair straightened abruptly. "GSW to which side?"

"The left side, why?"

**_Could it be...?_ **

**_Don't jump to conclusions, Chief. It could be a coincidence._ **

"That's the weird thing: his heart is on the right so while the bullet tore through his sternum and shattered some ribs, his heart wasn't pierced." She shook her head, her ponytail whipping side to side with the movement. "Hell, if he weren't a sentinel, he wouldn't have survived at all. He's lucky there was no ruptures or contusions on his heart nor any abdominal injuries."

**_What are the odds?_ **

"What's his name?"

"We don't know - he didn't have any ID on him."

"When can we meet him?"

Melissa looked at him askance for the barely suppressed excitement in the shaman's voice, but slowly opened the door, revealing a starkly furnished room with a large noiseless air purifier in one corner and a hospital bed along the opposite wall. Jim and Blair automatically looked at the couple, their bodies so entwined it looked like a four-legged and four-arm creature nested amongst the white sheets and thin white blanket. 

The female sentinel softly walked across the room with her senses completely shut down so Blair instinctively shielded Jim to mute him as much as possible, which was difficult since he  _was_ a Prime. They approached the railed bed and finally could see the guide was seemingly covering his sentinel, fingers pressing against the other's psi points on his face as if trying to physically as well as psychically touch him through the zone. Blair allowed one tendril of power through his defenses and brushed it against the edges of the younger guide's shields in order to test the emotional development.

Jim stepped in front of him, power roaring through him when the feral's oily eyes snapped open and he lashed out psychically at Blair, long lean length flipping until his guide was blanketed beneath his body. Blair's mental shield thickened as the bond roiled with a Prime's protective fury and the feral instinctively cowered away, though not so far to leave his guide unprotected. Blair was stricken by the thoughtlessness of his action and shocked by the feral's sensitivity. A three day cycle should've made him catatonic, yet here he was awake and aware enough to shield his bondmate.

"Don't speak, Prime Guide, please...you'll just agitate him...it hurts." Derek grimaced, clearly wanting to clutch at his aching head. "Melissa, do it quickly."

The whispered words brought the Primes' attention to the man beneath the feral and they could see pain dulling bright blue-green eyes. Derek made a shushing noise and slowly the tension left his sentinel's body, though his black gaze never left Jim and Blair. 

Blair wondered exactly how they could communicate when Derek had banned him from speaking, and the feral was too sensitive for Blair to attempt a mind to mind communication. The tendril of power he'd sent was on a guide sensory path, well below the psychic gateway meant for sentinel-guide connections, so the feral -  _Stiles_ a small voice pointed out - shouldn't have been able to feel it. Even Jim, for all his gifts, couldn't speak to anyone except Blair, or accept mental projections without his guide boosting his senses. 

Melissa, unnoticed during the hubbub, stepped forward and depressed a filled syringe directly into the carotid artery of the sentinel's neck. There was one brief moment of betrayal flashing across his face before the feral sank into unconsciousness. Blair could sense Derek was fighting the lull of the drug and appreciated the guide's tenaciousness when he retained awareness. Blair looked at the unconscious sentinel and could almost see a resemblance to the dead Stilinski twin, though weight loss, torture, and pain had altered his features to a certain degree Blair didn't feel entirely comfortable IDing him as the missing Stiles.

"It won't keep him down for long," Melissa cautioned quietly, stepping back towards the wall again. Blair nodded and motioned for Jim to speak.

"Who is he?"

Derek twisted his mouth unhappily. "He doesn't think of himself as anyone; there's a hole in his psyche. It's probably why whomever tortured him was able to keep him as long as they did." 

Blair felt Jim's frustration flair across their bond. They were both almost completely positive this was the missing Stilinski boy, but they couldn't even begin to fathom contacting his parents without one hundred percent certainty. 

"Can you... _see_...what happened to him?"

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Blair couldn't contain the small flair of amusement. Even with the years of their bond and Jim's own acceptance of his powers, enough of his mundane mentality remained that Jim sometimes looked at the sentinel-guide bond with trepidation. Jim was one of the oldest sentinels to ever come online, and quite traumatically, so it made sense.

Derek shook his head negatively. "The only reason I am able to hold him like this is due to his snake. Without Gerault, my sentinel would shred me." There was a spasm of shame crossing his face. "He's much stronger than I am."

"Derek..." Melissa interjected, her eyes soft with empathy. 

"It's true. Ulfric can't manifest so it's weakening the bond on my side. Gerault is stretched between the two of us as a bridge except he's not anchored wholly."

A niggle of a thought wended through Blair's mind, though he only caught the trailing edges of it, so he couldn't quite verbalize it. He cocked his head at Derek, inviting the younger man to continue.

Derek settled the feral a little closer to him while sliding out from under the slighter body and curled himself protectively around his sentinel. Upon closer inspection, it became apparent how emaciated the feral looked and anger spread through him. Jim shifted as he felt the after burn of heavy emotions emanating from Blair, though he didn't say anything either out loud or across the bond. It didn't matter because a guide was a mirror and a sentinel a reflection, endlessly cycling between the bonded pair.

"I think whoever kept him was a guide. He's extremely wary and defensive, plus there are...strange...weaknesses in his shields and mental walls even if he's only recently come online."

"A guide?" It fit in with their theory about who was taking the latent sentinels.

Derek nodded, a little frantically, his hands closing protectively around his sentinel's shoulders, careful not to jostle him. "I've only seen this type of psychic damage in sentinels who were abused by guides." There was dark anger undercutting his quiet words. "He was tortured physically, but even worse, I think the guide tried to bond with him and grew angry when it proved impossible."

Facts flashed between Blair and Jim as they viewed the case from this angle and both realized the information fit the new paradigm. 

"A guide who's sentinel died and the broken bond drove the guide insane, or maybe he went insane trying to recreate the bond, which would fail because of differing factors." 

Melissa inhaled sharply. "That's...not...oh god." 

"God had nothing to do with this," Blair muttered. 

A moment later Blair's neck hair rose as he sensed more than saw the feral sentinel return to consciousness and reacted by flinging himself away from the bed. It likely saved him from serious injury because the feral erupted from the bed with surprisingly agility and bounced off Jim's body, who's reflexes had reacted to his guide's distress. 

The feral crouched where he landed catlike, black eyes flickering around the room, though he didn't try to advance towards the shaken Blair. Melissa stepped forward in her anxiety and the feral switched his attention to her. His speed and fluidity of movement despite his impairment was truly impressive - less impressive were the fingers wrapped around the other sentinel's throat. Jim loosed his shields and silently commanded Blair do the same so the full weight of his Prime Alpha dominance hit the air and the feral half-turned in wonderment. 

Derek, by this time, had managed to leave the bed and brought his hands down on his sentinel's shoulders, which in turn eased the feral even more so than the pheromones in the air. Melissa eeled her way out from under the younger sentinel's weight and quickly scooted back until she reached Jim and Blair. Coughing slightly, she held a shaky hand up to her bruised skin. "Well, remind me not to do that again."

Blair blew out a breath at the spunky comment, relieved it wasn't worse. Sentinels were strong enough to take physical punishment that would severely impair, maim, or even kill mundanes, but ferals existed on a whole different level. And Blair wasn't stupid enough to think it was solely Jim's intervention that caused the feral to relax - if he wasn't mistaken, they may have a burgeoning alpha on their hands, which was unfortunate because Derek's own rating wasn't high enough for him to fully bond. It probably explained why they'd experienced a three-day bonding loop; Derek's guide abilities were taxed to the limit trying to bring the feral out of his Zone while the feral attempted to reject the bond. Of course, that didn't explain how Derek was able to pull out of the loop without Blair's express help nor why the feral was responding to the younger guide as if he was truly his guide. Blair's eyes narrowed as he gazed at the now embracing pair - something wasn't right here, more so than the Sentinel Killer allowing his victim to escape. 

"Derek...who tested your guide level?"

Derek, caught up in his sentinel's embrace as the feral had wound himself around the guide during Blair's brief inattention, absentmindedly responded, "Deaton, why?" The feral growled low in his throat and Derek stopped talking, dropping his head to nestle against the younger sentinel and the black oily eyes that watched them all suspiciously dropped to half-mast as he clearly enjoyed the touch. A brief flash of blue-green flickered around the feral's thin bicep, another indication that the feral was probably an Alpha. Only Alphas could summon their spiritual animals to the physical plane - which lead to even more questions about this already odd situation. One thing was for certain, though. He and Guide Deaton needed to have a chat.

A questing thread traveled down Blair's bond with Jim and he shook his head silently at his own sentinel, indicating he would tell Jim later.

"Nothing important, just rest. You'll both need to eat soon."

Sentinel McCall had stood during the conversation and was pressing a series of buttons on a discreetly set display on the wall by the doorway. "This will alert the staff to their state and sustenance will be delivered to them." Blair hadn't realized there was a dumb-waiter recessed in the wall until a gentle electronic ding sounded and Melissa slid open a panel that revealed it. She didn't touch the tray as she didn't want to rub her scent on it, but stepped away and waved Derek forward. He shook his head, but pantomimed he would get to it eventually.

Blair knew there was little they could do now, so he waved goodbye and felt the older sentinels following him out the door. Once they were far enough down the hallway for Blair to feel comfortable speaking again - regardless of the suite's sound-proofing - he turned to Melissa with a grim look.

"I think I better meet Guide Deaton."

The pretty sentinel looked thoughtful; she wasn't stupid and knew there was something going on, but refrained from asking. Politics were a strong force even in their world and despite being a Sentinel, she didn't have seniority over Blair, so she merely agreed and briskly walked over to a nearby guide station with a phone. She quickly dialed a number and spoke to someone in a low-voice. Blair knew Jim was listening so he didn't bother paying attention to Melissa's conversation, satisfied it would lead to a favorable outcome. He loved his job, loved his life, but sometimes he did wish they could just get away from everything for just a little while. He was day-dreaming about the little cabin in the woods no one knew about that was their favorite vacation spot when the sharpness in Melissa's voice pulled him back to the present.

"What do you mean, you don't know where he is? I just saw him -" she stopped talking as the voice on the phone interrupted her. The frown of disbelief on Melissa's face morphed into anger. "I never authorized that!"

Jim stepped forward and took the receiver from her hand, speaking authoritatively into it.

Blair looked at the female sentinel. "What's going on?"

"Alpha Guide Deaton is gone by way of the hospital chopper."

Blair's eyebrows raised. "The emergency one?"

"No, we have another one that's used for staff if we're conscripted to go into the field. It's usually backup to the main 'copter as our people rarely need to leave." She balled her fists. "What I want to know is what the hell Deaton is doing?"

"So do I, so do I," Blair murmured thoughtfully. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that sternal fractures are often accompanied by heart issues (possible myocardial ruptures, pulmonary contusions, damage to blood vessels) or abdominal or vertebral injuries and can have high mortality rates (especially with a bullet), but I've decided to hand-wave realistic consequences because he's a "goddamn insane sentinel" and obviously they have accelerated healing.


End file.
